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The Kid’s Back Home

I talked to Eamon — let’s see: Monday night Berkeley time; Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo. He was back home from the hospital and sounding great; it was such a relief to hear his voice. He told me all about what it’s like to have a collapsed lung (he thought he was having a heart attack). When he saw his chest X-ray at the hospital, his right lung was big and expanded and normal. On the other side was something that he said looked “like a spike.” It was his left lung, which the doctors said had collapsed to something like one-quarter its usual size.

So, after the surgery and the fever and the convalescence (and dealing with hospital personnel who thought, incorrectly, that he didn’t know what they were saying when they spoke Japanese) and the lack of a bedside telephone, for heaven’s sake, he’s back in his now very-comfortable-seeming apartment in Sato, just outside Tokyo.

Like I said: I am relieved.

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Solstice Ride

The summer solstice occurred at 11:46 p.m. last night, the 20th. I didn’t go out and fire off my handgun, because I forgot to buy one and I don’t have any ammo.

So today: The first full day of summer. The days are just about as long as they’re going to get. I spent the day in my office at the law school, and didn’t think much about the season. But when I got home, I decided to try to fight past my usual evening inertia and go out for a ride.

I didn’t get started till nearly 8 (7:54, actually), but figured I had enough time to make it to the highest point of Grizzly Peak Boulevard in the Berkeley Hills to see the sun go down (according to the online and newspaper almanacs I’ve found, sunset was at 8:35 p.m.).

I made it up to the little pullout where people go to look down on the city and watch the evening come on when the weather’s clear (there are plenty of evenings when the fog cuts visibility to 100 feet or less up in the hills, and I’ve been riding up there then, too). I made it without about three minutes to spare and watched the sun disappear behind a mountain peak somewhere in northwestern Marin County. Then I got on my bike and started to ride away when someone said, “Dan!”

It was my neighbor Piero, with his son Niko. We’d been standing about 10 yards apart, I’d guess. But all of us were so focused on watching this first day of summer close that we never saw each other. They drove back down, and I finished my ride.

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Modest Proposal: Cycling Edition

I belong to a bike club here in Berkeley. That is, I pay my dues, subscribe to the email list, and once in a very long while go on a club ride (my riding habit is usually solitary, an effect of taking a long time to get going on weekend mornings).

The club’s email list is mostly informative and entertaining, but sometimes given to extended pissing matches over who knows how much about some arcane (or perfectly ordinary) facet of cycling. The latest example: Member One posted at random about his love of a certain brand of tires for riding in the rain. It’s not the first time he’s touted the brand; I don’t know whether he’s getting a kickback or what. Member Two quickly chimed in, as he did once before, to observe that the tires in question go on the rim very easily — too easily, in fact, because he had one blow off his rim during a ride once. Member Two would never use that brand of tire.

The exchange inspired me. Quoting myself, here’s my contribution to the discussion:

I’ve been experimenting this year with doing away with tires altogether and just riding on some bare old rims that have been lying around the house for years. Straight-away traction, let alone cornering, is a bit tricky until you have a few miles on the unadorned rims. That’s all it takes for the local pavements to roughen the metal surface and give you a secure grip on terra firma. Talk about getting a good feel for the road! But for the lack of a tire, it’s practically like riding sew-ups.

Old steel rims are particularly fun to ride after dark; as a paramedic I met after one ride said, the chro-mo wheels create "quite a light show" as you career down the macadam. And if that’s not enough to persuade you of the virtues of rubber-less riding — shut your ears to the nay-sayers who complain about the slight increase in noise — just think about the weight savings: Since you don’t need to worry about flats (or tires blowing off) anymore, you don’t need spare tubes, patch kit, tire levers, or pump, either (but just as you would on a pneumatically cushioned jaunt, remember to  bring your medical and dental insurance cards with you when you ride rubber-less).

With all these advantages, word on "the street" is that Trek has hooked up with Bridgestone, the Japanese tire and bicycle maker, to develop a more durable "naked" rim for both both road and off-road riding. I’ve also heard that Rivendell is considering offering a new model — tentatively named the "Orc" — equipped with tireless rims and featuring no brakes.

I’ll admit I won’t be satisfied unless at least one club member takes this seriously.

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News from Japan

I realize that I’ve left the situation with Eamon, his collapsed lung, and his recovery as a bit of a cliffhanger. That’s mostly because it has been hard to keep up with what’s going on as it happens. But here’s the summary:

The surgical procedure to repair whatever needed to be repaired to prevent a recurrence of the spontaneous pneumothorax went fine from what we’ve heard. But after the surgery, Eamon developed a rather serious-sounding infection: He was running a high fever and for a couple days, anyway, had no appetite and couldn’t keep food down. My word for that news is “worrisome,” and in fact we were pretty concerned.

The latest from Sakura, in an email she sent this morning, is that Eamon is feeling much better , his appetite is coming back, and he really, really wants to get out of the hospital. Apparently the doctors plan to do some tests on Monday, Japan time; if everything is clear, they’ll turn him loose.

I can’t wait to talk to him.

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The Day After Graduation Day

It happened: Thom graduated from high school. That’s not the shocker. This is: When you hear people say things like, “Gee, it seems like just last week that we were taking him to the first day of pre-school,” believe them. It’s true. I saw our neighbor Asa today — he lived next door when we moved in in April 1988, and he’s still there. He and one of his roommates once baby-sat for Tom (then without the H). Their big adventure while Kate and I were out for the evening was changing his diaper. I know it happened a long time ago. But not that long ago, and now that kid is getting ready to pack up his stuff and move on. It’s what’s supposed to happen among us middle-class Americans and what does happen when all your hopes and work and planning and luck fit together right. Two boys out the door to next adventures. I can’t believe how quickly it all happened.

That’s all for now, I guess, except to say that for the most part I liked the event. It was crowded and wild. The Greek Theatre has an official capacity of 8,500, and the place looked like it was packed. It was as close to a true community celebration as Berkeley has — all the kids in public school go to Berkeley High (if they haven’t managed to get themselves sent to the “alternative” campus a few blocks away), and it seemed like all the families with seniors showed up. The crowd was raucous. The kids were often unruly. Most of the student speakers — and there were many — were sadly forgettable. In an exercise of hyper-democracy or gesture of anti-elitism, the program didn’t explain how any of the kids earned the distinction of a speech or say whether they were chosen by lottery. Still, I loved seeing so many of the kids I’ve known or heard about over the years going through the graduation line; and it was a great moment when the ceremony ended and the 680-some kids in the class just moshed together for about 15 or 20 minutes. It was one group of very happy-looking kids.

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Bush’s Numbers

The New York Times is out with its latest poll on how we, red states and blue alike, feel about our commander-in-chief/village idiot. Here’s the lead:

“Increasingly pessimistic about Iraq and skeptical about President Bush’s plan for Social Security, Americans are in a season of political discontent, giving Mr. Bush one of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and even lower marks to Congress, according to the New York Times/CBS News Poll.”

“Season of political discontent.” That’s got a ring to it. But does it actually mean anything? On its Web site, the Times publishes 21 pages of poll results. The statistics apparently include all the questions asked in its most recent survey as well the past results when the same questions were asked. It’s interesting to look at what people were saying a year ago.

Then, the Times poll found that 42 percent of respondents approved of the way Bush was handling his job, and 51 percent did not. Today’s dramatic change: 42 percent approve and 51 percent do not.

Let’s look at Iraq. The Times asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?” A year ago, 36 percent said they approved and 58 percent said they disapproved; today, 37 percent approve and 59 percent disapprove.

(The poll’s historical numbers on Iraq seem to show how much we like a winner, how much we’re swayed by a good TV picture, and how ephemeral wide popular support of the war has been: The high point for Iraq support in this poll came in a survey done April 11-13, 2003, immediately after U.S. troops entered Baghdad and we all got to watch that Saddam statue getting pulled down: 79 percent said they approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq and 17 percent disapproved. The support numbers stayed in the 70s through late May ’03 — the month Bush declared victory — but fell into the high 50s in July. September 2003 marked the first time the poll found more respondents (47 percent) disapproving than approving (46 percent). And in fact, the approval number has risen above 50 percent just once since — the week after Saddam’s capture in December 2003, when it popped up to 59 percent, only to fall back into the 40s by mid-January.)

The point is, if we’re in a season of political discontent, it’s nothing new. The real question you need to unravel is how, with numbers like this, did Bush get re-elected. I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that, but some of the elements of an answer are out there: The public’s low regard for Congress (current approval number, according to Times poll, is 33 percent; and the rather confounding finding that people approve of Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism (52-40 in the current poll).

And beyond the numbers, there’s the fact the Democrats can’t seem to find the utterly perfect candidate that everyone seems to think they need as an alternative to Bush and his crew of nation wreckers. I wonder if people, in their discontent, would consider Kerry now?

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Raining Monkey Wrenches

Radar

Nature’s mid-June turn toward winter continues, prompting a local news anchor to say, "This rain has certainly put a monkey wrench on a lot of special events." I wouldn’t dare try to improve on that.

But by my completely unofficial calculations, the two mild storms that have blown in from the Pacific over the past week may have been enough for Berkeley to break its record from June rainfall. Old record, 1.21 inches, in 1967; total this month: something more than that — a weather station up at the Lawrence Hall of Science, at a higher altitude than the official weather station on the UC campus, says it’s gotten 1.28 inches so far.

In related news: Tom’s last real day of high school was today. The graduation is tomorrow evening. Outdoors at the Hearst Greek Theatre on campus. Beware the meteorological monkey wrench. Kate and I met the Berkeley High principal at the grocery story the other night — sometimes this is a small town — and he said, "Hope it doesn’t rain. But if it does — well, we’ll do it anyway. There’s nowhere else to go."

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When It’s Not the Ides

Trying to be smart once — once, mind you — I wished someone “happy ides of June” on the 15th of the month. I happened to say it to one of the few people I’ve ever met who could instantly set me straight. My assumption was that since the ides of March is the 15th, then it follows that the 15th of every month would be the ides. But my friend and sometimes trivia nemesis — I’ll call him Randy, since that’s his name –said, “Oh, it’s not the ides of June.”

That’s because we’re dealing with an artifact of the ancient lunar version of the Roman calendar — which has a series of special days to account for (kalends, nones, and ides), The long story short: the ides (which originally was supposed to designate the full moon) falls on the 15th in four months: March, May, July, and October. The rest of the time it falls on the 13th.

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Flag Day, the Quiz

I just got my first American flag lapel pin in the mail, the result of having contributed some dough to the USO over the holidays. Now the USO wants more money so that the troops will know we love them even though we keep sending them off to Crazyworld (don’t worry — I’ll cheer up about that one of these years). So they sent me an American flag lapel pin. It’ll make a great conversation piece among future generations of Brekkes: “I don’t remember him ever wearing anything like this.” Or maybe not.

In any case, the lapel pin arrived virtually on the eve of Flag Day. The demi-holiday is nearly past, but it’s not too late to exercise some flag aptitude. Try:

–The Christian Science Monitor’s flaq quiz; it comes with a dollop of Flag Day trivia, too.

–The University of Saskatchewan’s Flags of North America Quiz.

–For serious U.S. flag geeks only: American Vexillum Magazine’s all-flag quiz. (You may reasonably ask, what in the world is a vexillum? To find the answer, read about vexillology.

–For deep, unguided flag browsing, see the Flags of the World’s international flag index.